Another week has passed, which can only mean one thing: we have finally reached the last leg of our expedition through the art nestled in Alserkal. Ten of the 16 exhibitions have already appeared in Parts 1 and 2, so if you have been following along, my little art lovers, you have likely made a few stops already. And if you haven’t, no blame — there is still plenty of time to catch up.

Meanwhile, I know you are craving something new, so here it is: the final six exhibitions to see in Alserkal this autumn. Think of this as your quick prep list for where to look and what to expect.

It is quite unusual for a gallery to host several exhibitions at once. Then again, Leila Heller has never really been the place to follow the standard route, has it? So this autumn, think of it as a little art-world promotion: come for one exhibition and get two more for free. Now, what is actually inside?

Exhibition: In Search of Material Within Material

Dates: September 23 – November, 10

In Search of Material Within Material is a solo exhibition by Mumbai-based artist Manish Nai, whose practice has long been built from the things most of us would walk past: jute, newspaper, cardboard, old clothes and books, mesh, rusted corrugated metal. Many of these materials arrive already used, already worn by other lives and other purposes.
For Nai, material works almost like an archive, quietly recording what has happened to it. His question is a simple one: what remains once an object stops being what it was meant to be?

That question finds a particularly rich thread in billboards. Nai is less interested in the advertisements themselves than in what is left when they disappear: exposed mesh, metal frameworks, blank surfaces, faint traces of what was once there. For years, he has photographed these stripped-back structures across Mumbai, building a quiet record of the city's overlooked edges.

In this exhibition, those observations move from the street into the work. Painted aluminium is mounted over stainless-steel mesh, borrowing the visual language of these empty urban structures. What was once only a support for someone else's message becomes the subject itself.

Exhibition: Between a fold and a memory

Dates: September 23 – November, 10

Second on our list, though certainly not second in importance, is Dr Karima Al Shomely's solo exhibition, Between a Fold and a Memory. Her work begins with a simple idea: clothes remember. Drawing on the cultural heritage of Emirati women, she looks closely at traditional garments, textiles and adornments, and finds in them whole libraries of stories, identities and everyday experience, tucked away in every seam.

Working across photography, sculpture, textile and video, Al Shomely lets these familiar objects do some talking. In her hands, they become keepers of memory and witnesses to the lives of generations of women.

Pride of place goes to the Emirati burqa — the stiff, often metallic-sheened face covering once worn by married women across the Gulf, traditionally made from indigo-treated or gold-coated cloth. Together with other traditional fabrics, it becomes her starting point for bigger conversations about femininity, women’s labour and the changing roles of women themselves.

Another place, another luck. And again two cool exhibitions happening at the same time and at the same place.

Exhibition: The Canticle of the Birds

Dates: September, 23 — November, 11

The Canticle of the Birds is the solo exhibition of French-Algerian artist and filmmaker Katia Kameli, and anyone who loves Persian poetry will already have spotted a clue in the title. The whole show takes its inspiration from The Conference of the Birds, the twelfth-century Persian Sufi poem by Farid ud-Din Attar.

In the poem, a great flock of birds sets out to find the ruler they have always lacked: the mythical Simurgh. To reach her, they must cross seven valleys, and this is no ordinary journey. Each valley stands for a stage on the path to spiritual understanding, and with every one, the flock grows smaller. By the end, only thirty birds remain. They finally arrive before the Simurgh and discover… themselves.

Kameli doesn't simply illustrate the poem. Instead, she brings this centuries-old journey into the present, using the flock to think about migration, belonging, community and ecology. Birds crossing borders, moving together and searching for a place to land suddenly feel far less like a medieval allegory and much more like something we recognise today.

And Kameli gives this flock more than a symbolic presence — she gives it a voice. Throughout the exhibition, the birds actually sing. How exactly? I will leave that for you to discover once you arrive.

Exhibition: In Frogs, Jazz and Blisters

Dates: September, 23 — November, 11

Frogs, Jazz and Blisters is the first solo exhibition in Dubai by Kuwaiti artist Dalal Al-Obaidi, who studied at Central Saint Martins and now lives and works in Kuwait. Now, you might wonder why we are bringing up her student years at all. Well, this is where the whole thing starts to make sense. The show is about a life split between two places, and about what happens to your idea of home when you spend long enough moving between very different worlds.

A lot of the show is built from small moments Dalal has carried with her from one place to another — which brings us to its quirky, slightly mismatched title. Frogs, jazz and blisters may not seem to belong together, but that is often how memories behave: some moments pass almost without a trace, while others stick around for years.

One of the central works, Dream Exchange, grows out of a real episode outside a London jazz club. Dalal was standing in the queue when a musician was turned away from performing. Upset, he did something unexpected: he handed his guitar to Dalal, a complete stranger.

Exhibition: Taking Form

Dates: September, 23 — November, 10

Taking Form is a solo exhibition by Bangladeshi-born artist Rana Begum, whose work plays with light, colour and geometry. Light is the secret star: it becomes part of the artwork itself. Stand before a Begum and you see one shade, one pattern, one composition. Take a few steps and everything shifts. The light lands differently, the surface changes with it, and what seemed still becomes something new. You aren't just looking at the work. Your movement helps make it.

That sense of movement runs through her use of Islamic geometry too. Picture a small square cut from a vast pattern and set in a frame: the artwork stops at the edge, but your eye keeps going, sure the pattern carries on forever. It is a personal thread, too. Born in Bangladesh, Begum has long drawn on the geometry of Islamic art and architecture.

And, as a final twist in Taking Form, a new player joins the game of Begum's practice: textiles. In the first gallery, two monumental wool works, each almost five metres tall, drop from the ceiling. Step into the second and the material changes again, with large-scale works on raw linen. Light, colour and geometry are all still in play, only now they have got a completely different surface to dance on.

Exhibition: Sculptures, Furniture & Works on Paper

Dates: September, 26 — October, 31

Sculptures, Furniture & Works on Paper is a solo show by French conceptual artist Bernar Venet, whose experiments with the line go back to the 1960s, when he began bringing mathematics and scientific diagrams into art. Here, three parts of that practice meet: works on paper from 2004–2022, steel sculpture and furniture.

The star of the show is the line. It is the starting point for almost everything here, changing in scale, material and function throughout the exhibition. In 90.5° Arc × 21 (2022) and 56.5° Arc × 14 (2023), a simple geometric line becomes a massive steel structure — and the titles literally tell you the angle and number of elements involved. No decoding required.

But not every line in Venet’s work follows a formula. His Indeterminate Lines, which he has explored since the 1980s, do the opposite: instead of following a precise angle or curve, they twist, loop and take on a much less predictable form. This is where another recurring idea in his work comes in — the contrast between control and chance.

Exhibition: The Fields of Dreams

Dates: September 19 – November 8

The Field of Dreams is a solo exhibition by Palestinian artist Bashar Khalaf. Like many artists from the region, he draws on the realities of conflict and occupation in his homeland, looking at how the machinery of war can reshape even the most ordinary things. The recurring material here is metal: cars, bulldozers, surveillance cameras, shop doors and rubbish bins.

Take the series Protective Shield, which turns to the humble bin. During the First Intifada, Palestinians used rubbish bins as roadblocks and as cover from bullets, while Israeli forces used metal barrels filled with concrete to seal off the entrances to Palestinian villages and camps. The same everyday material suddenly takes on two opposing roles: a means of protection on one side and control on the other.

The title The Field of Dreams, then, comes with a sting in the tail. This is not an exhibition about pretty dreams of the future. Here, the “field of dreams” sits uncomfortably close to a minefield.

Exhibition: A World Within Worlds

Dates: September, 23 – October, 24

A World Within Worlds, the solo exhibition by Delhi-based artist Ravi Kumar Chaurasiya, explores home as more than four walls: how much space we truly need, what happens when we always want more, and who has to share the world we build.

That is why the works feel part-surreal. Chaurasiya weaves real buildings and natural landscapes together with wholly imagined spaces, so the atmosphere becomes both physical and psychological. Home is more than walls: it is memory, a sense of safety, desire and fear, and our private picture of the good life.

Hence the title. Within a single space, many worlds coexist: human and animal, natural and built, invented and remembered.